They're using AI because they want to make money with no effort, transcribing a story would count as effort. I do hope it doesn't end up coming to that, though.
My concern is to what extent they consider an entry 'composed' by AI. I haven't submitted entries anywhere, and haven't used any A.I. for anything I've completed, but I was impressed with 'sudowrite'. I experimented with it and it seemed like it could be helpful for a writer that is stuck on a specific description or just wants to use it during the brainstorming phase. It will give some suggestions on sight, taste, smell, touch, and potential metaphors, but whether using that for ideas is 'cheating' is debatable and I'm wondering how tolerant some places would be on the use of such tools. I was at a writer's group a few months ago and several people there talked about sudowrite without any concern. One of the individuals showed the cover of his latest book which was done entirely with A.I. and was not bad. I put in some of the basic descriptions from the other thread about the vampire queen dress, and sudowrite provided some good ideas one might use for refining that passage, although it didn't mention anything about describing the dark beads like grapes, which was the first thing that came to my mind. Outside of the issue of how acceptable the use of such tools are in the broader writing world, my other concerns is, even if some suggestions by an A.I. are massaged by the user into something derivative that they could claim as their 'own', whether the final result would still be too close to something used in the original corpus of text that the specific A.I. was trained with. Then the author's only defense against blatant plagiarism is that they were lazy and used a tool to help write the passage. This then goes back to the inspiration vs plagiarism debate. I must confess though that I have used the website fantasynamegenerators many times, but usually I will use a shotgun approach until I find a suitable first name and the same for the last name rather than the full names the site suggests.
You describe using AI as a tool, which isn't that different from using a manual on writing. What strikes me more is the concern that people use these tools to write the entire book, with zero skull sweat on their part. Like is happening with college term papers. I have a real problem with lazy SOBs trying to pass an AI generated story off as their own work.
Oh God. Sorry about this, some of what follows is entirely stupid. I know it's stupid and don't mind if it's pointed out to me that it's stupid. Just keep in mind I'm aware of it. When stuck with not knowing what to write, there are alternatives to using AI as a tool/guide/co-author/ghost. Wait. Work it out. Don't write. I guess it depends on what and why you're doing it. I picked up a copy of King's "On Writing" the other day, 1 euro in a second-hand shop, deliberated for about ten minutes, flicked through and what I came across seemed more cheer-leading encouragement than prescriptive "do this, that, the other" and I might well dip into it. But, here's the stupid, it feels like cheating. I want to work it out myself, get as far as I can get by reading, discussing, hearing back what others think of things I've written, talking to them about things they've written. If that doesn't bring me very far, that's ok too. I might add, very soon after I last got involved in this type of discussion in WF, I came across: She has all the convictions of the uninformed. My first thought was shut the fuck up Mr Steinbeck, no-one asked ya. But yeah, I don't particularly care how others choose to approach it, but this AI , how-to stuff is certainly not for me.
Dunning-Kruger Effect a cognitive bias in which people beginners wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This tends to occur because a lack of self-awareness prevents them from accurately assessing their own skills. ... those in the 12th percentile self-rated their expertise to be, on average, in the 62nd percentile. More info here: Dunning-Kruger Effect This isn't to say these people are stupid.* What they are is ignorant of certain important facts, and that's a very different thing. But along with it goes a certain unintended arrogance. Not only do they rate themselves much higher than they actually are, but they also tend to rate professionals and experts as only maybe slightly better than themselves, or in some cases not even as good. When Little Johnnie puts his crayon drawing up on the refrigerator, if you'd show him a DaVinci, he may well think his own is far better, because he has no understanding of the principles of drawing like perspective, proportioning, symmetry, anatomy, proper lighting and shading etc. Until he knows these things exist, he's incapable of recognizing them in the work of really knowedgeable artists. It sounds like what you're talking about is re-inventing the wheel. It's taken countless people countless lifetimes to understand the principles and devices that can help us write better and avoid the big pitfalls beginners tend to fall into over and over. If you ignore their words of wisdom, you're effectively beginning the same journey the first one began centuries ago, with no help. You might make it a little ways in... Would you try to re-invent math with no knowledge of it? Set to work creating a crude abbacus because you think it would be smart to invent a counting machine? * By 'these people' I mean all of us when we're beginners. We all start at the low end of the Dunning/Kruger spectrum, and it's only through proper education we can move toward the other end.
That said, I do believe it's important to spend a certain amount of time just writing for fun, with no attempt to 'do it right'. I got that out of the way as a kid and a teenager, when I wasn't even interested in doing it right. This is how we develop a facility with writing itself and with some of the rudimentary aspects of storytelling. But once you've developed this kind of facility beyond the level of a competent high-school graduate or a really good grade school graduate, the way to increase your skills is through self-education. Unless you're one of those people who show a great natural facility with it and can crank out stories that get published without resorting to study.
We've had this dance before @Xoic. There's a few things I see differently. Rejecting a particular pathway towards learning a skill is not the same as failing to recognise deficit in knowledge and need to learn. Admittedly, it can come across as arrogant and those statements of not knowing may impress as false modesty. It's not necessarily so. Good authors, who have learned all the optimum techniques, will still produce poor writing. Sometimes, indeed, we in the audience hark back to those early days when the writing was fresh and fearless. I'd also consider that success is not primarily because they've mastered those techniques but because they had a story that had to be told and the structure came together because that was the only way to tell that story. I think authors often don't understand what makes one work popular over another, hence the insecurity that can be a feature in the lives of many writers. Having that story that must be told is what's vital and it does come across in the reading. It doesn't have to be a guided tour of the author's lower intestine, it applies equally to a light fantasy or comedy or whatever. With that as starting point, seek guidance wherever floats your boat when stuck, listen to what people say when they review your work and steadily grow through the little cuts and the little scabs that are, in my opinion, the only things that educate the author. Instructive as some of the discussions on the forum can be, the workshop has been of most benefit and I'd probably not be here without it.
Wow! I don't know why you get so bent out of shape. The Dunning/Kruger stuff I posted was in response to this: Which is just a different way of saying it. We have, but you made the same opening move. Why fault me for following up? Plus—much of the advice you get in here is from people who have, guess what, read books on writing. You're just getting it secondhand. I guess I didn't understand what you were saying with your post, it sounded like you were ready to start learning writing techniques. Geeze man, I wasn't trying to twist your arm or force you to do anything, just stating things the way I see them. I'll stop trying.
I know many people like King's on writing, but I felt it was short on technique advice and long on autobiography. There is nothing wrong letting things simmer for a bit.
At what point does the time put into reading books about writing become subject to the law of diminishing returns and turn into a complete waste of time? As far as I can tell, the things that make a story worth reading are the spaces of variation in between the common patterns. You can grow weeds on a trellis just as well as beans or clematises.
At some point you are correct about diminishing returns. But even the most experienced writer can find new tricks or techniques that they can add to their own toolbox.
For me it's a question of opportunity cost. I don't have time to trawl through five billion books on story structure to find useful tidbits, and I don't think anyone else does either. If you're really interested in that stuff for its own sake then it's different, but for me I think it's better to read stories.
Just to try and see how original an AI could be, I asked ChatGPT to write me a story about knights who say "Ni". It came up with something about a king named Arthur who was looking for the Holy Grail being instructed to find them a shrubbery. You may have heard this story somewhere before.
Not very helpful I'm afraid I haven't used ChatGPT before. Wow. Tears in my eyes. Spoiler Once upon a time, there was a young woman named Maria. She was born into a poor family and had to work hard from a young age to help support them. Despite her difficult circumstances, Maria had a passion for dance. She would often sneak away from her chores to practice in secret. One day, while practicing in an abandoned warehouse, Maria met a young man named Juan. Juan was a gang member and had a reputation for violence. Despite his rough exterior, Maria felt drawn to him. They began to spend time together, and Juan taught Maria how to dance salsa, a style of dance popular in their community. As they danced together, Maria and Juan fell deeply in love. Their passion for dance and for each other was all-consuming. However, their love was not without its challenges. Juan's gang activities often put him in danger, and Maria worried constantly about his safety. One night, while they were dancing at a local club, a rival gang member approached Juan with a gun. Juan tried to protect Maria, but he was shot and killed. Maria's world shattered. She was consumed by grief and rage. She could not bear the thought of living without Juan. In her grief, Maria turned to dance. She threw herself into her passion with a ferocity she had never known before. She danced with all her heart, using the movements to express her pain and anger. Her performances were raw and emotional, and audiences were moved to tears. Despite her success as a dancer, Maria could not escape the loss she had suffered. She knew that Juan's death had been the result of senseless violence, and she was determined to do something about it. She began to speak out against the gangs in her community, urging young people to choose a different path. Maria's message resonated with many, and she became a powerful voice for change. She continued to dance, using her art to inspire others and to honor Juan's memory. Her passion and her resilience were a testament to the human spirit's ability to overcome even the most profound loss.
It's all in extreme narrative summary, not a moment of showing involved. In fact it reads like a one-page summary. No character development. It kinda reads like a fairy tale, you know? Or a children's story. 'There was a man named John. He lived in a small town. He liked to attend the rodeo... ' I wonder if AI could be taught to do showing? Maybe we'd better not give the programmers any ideas.
Yeah, it reads like something a kid would come up with if asked to write a one-page story. They'd also use 16-point font to fill the space. I still can't believe anyone would pretend it was their own creation. It's so horrible.
I wonder how many restrictions Chat GPT has on it? I mean, I've seen a few stories it wrote now, and they're all the same length and amount of detail etc. But apparently people are submitting stories written by other AIs. Do some write longer stories? I'm also wondering if it uses some kind of formula/template? I'll bet if you read a bunch written by the same AI they'll all have basically the same structure with little or no variation. Unless some of the other ones work differently. Or maybe ChatGPT could be finagled to write something longer or with a different structure.
Seriously though, this all disturbs me quite a bit. I'm becoming more and more convinced that what I am experiencing as life is simply a consciousness, naturally or artificially created, that has been inserted into a video game where I advance incrementally, and with increasing difficulty. I've only just started to take writing seriously, and now, before I even get really good, we've got narcissists and charlatans spamming publishers with fake stories? While reading up on this, I also found it disturbing to learn about some of those writing "assistance" tools and how normalized they seem to be. That's messed up. Certified free trade. No artificial flavours or colours. Certified organic. Made in the USA. Maybe the future of writing is going to have to include new disclaimers. 100% Pure Human Words.
Yep, our new version of the Gutenberg press has arrived, and everything is in the process of getting all shook up. It reminds me of when the Napster thing happened and turned the whole music industry on its head. Don't you love living in the Digital age, when change happens faster than ever?
But give it 10-20 years and how horrible will it be? The 20th century was a mistake. I have a new ironic avatar to mask my horror.
